The Colonies
America in the seventeenth century, with England as its mother, was likened to a blundering, stumbling fledgling who at times experienced a brief semblance of success. English America, as an infant, differed, however, from other newborns. In time it painfully sprouted numerous appendages. Two of America's first limbs were Virginia
and Massachusetts. Once these colonies were off and running it was only a matter of time before other extensions came into being such as Rhode Island and Connecticut to the north while to the southward grew Georgia and the Carolinas.
The Towns
Within each of these branching limbs small digits grew. In Massachusetts they were Boston, Salem, Charlestown, and others. English citizens who had elected, for various reasons, to leave their Mother Country behind and make a new life in the New World peopled them. Strangely, at least in New England, these towns were organized in an age-old manner like the towns these people had left behind them in England. In spite of making a brave choice to begin a new life in a wild and savage land, old habits and old ways of doing things are often the hardest of all things to change. But changes do come, and did as young America began to grow and, like any healthy infant, in time America slowly began to think for its self.
In New England, each township took on the responsibility of disposing of its public lands. It was sort of like a nanny handing out how ever many cookies the Mother had decided each child could have. In this case the child, the settler, was given a lot to build its house upon and plant a garden or orchard. Each settler also received a set portion of arable land and meadow and was given the right to pasture his stock, such as cows, goats, and sheep, on the common.
Shared Economy
For larger agricultural operations, such as planting fields of corn or wheat, the settler was told where and how much to plant and the endeavor was usually a combined effort performed by all.
Colonial America series continues with:
Source:
Sachs, William S. and Ari Hoogenboom. The Enterprising Colonials: Society on the Eve of the Revolution. Argonaut, Inc., Publishers, Chicago, 1965.
